Triple 9

Triple 9 is a crime thriller that takes an all-star cast, and then places them in shadowy and dimly lit scenes so that sometimes we can barely see them.  The plot is pretty shadowy too, filled with dirty cops, double crosses, the Russian Mafia, and Latino gangsters.  For all of its twists, turns and tragic elements, the story here ends up being pretty lightweight.

The movie is set in Atlanta, but don't expect the tourism committee to be using this film to bring in vacationers anytime soon.  In this movie, tattooed criminals pretty much lurk on every single street corner, and the Russian Mafia do their business in broad daylight without anyone noticing.  The Mafia runs a slaughterhouse front so they can ship their bloody cargo without the police noticing...Well, the police who aren't in their pocket or being blackmailed by them, anyway.  This is one of those movies where nearly everyone is corrupt, or a terrible person.  I have nothing against this.  I've enjoyed plenty of movies about terrible people, such as Nightcrawler with Jake Gyllenhaal.  But you see, Gyllenhaal's character in that movie wasn't just immoral, he was fascinating.  We became entranced by him and the world he lived in, and we wanted to know more.  The people here are simply awful, vindictive and murderous with no intriguing personalities to back them up.  Triple 9 so clearly wants to be a movie in the style of Michael Mann or Quentin Tarantino, but the script isn't up to the level it wants to be.  It doesn't help that the movie is frequently under-lit and just kind of muddy to look at.

The people at the center of the plot are a group of military and crooked cops who are under the thumb of the Mafia, which is represented by Vlaslov, a Russian black widow woman who is played by an unconvincing Kate Winslet speaking with an equally unconvincing accent.  Her sole character trait is that she is Jewish.  Just in case we miss this, she wears a large Star of David necklace at all times.  She wants these guys to steal something from a safe deposit box that will free her husband from prison somehow.  It's not really explained very well.  The military criminals are Michael (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Russel (Norman Reedus), while the crooked cops are Marcus (Anthony Mackie) and Jorge (Clifton Collins Jr.) and Gabe (Aaron Paul), who is Russel's brother.  All of these guys have some ties to Vlaslov, but the one most important to the plot is Michael, who has a young son with Vlaslov's younger sister (Gal Gadot), whom he previously had a relationship with.  The villains are preventing him from spending time with the kid, and if he wants him back, he has to pull off a job.

The guys pull off a job in the opening scene, which is easily the most thrilling moment in the film.  But after they're done, it turns out Vlaslov wants them to pull one more heist before she will give them the money she's promised them all.  This new job is much harder than the last one, and they don't know how they're going to pull it off without getting caught.  That's when they get an idea - They'll kill a cop, and this will distract the Atlanta police long enough that they can do this last heist without any interruption.  This is where the title comes from, as the code for "officer down" is 999.  Marcus volunteers his new partner, Chris (Casey Affleck), to be the cop they'll gun down.  Chris is one of the few decent cops in the city of Atlanta apparently, so he naturally has an invisible target on his back as soon as he walks on the screen.  While all this is going on, we get a subplot about a police detective (Woody Harrelson) who is investigating the heist that opened the film, and feels that the ones behind it are not done yet.  Harrelson gives an odd performance here, as if he's not sure he's supposed to be playing his part straight, or as an edgy comic relief.  How else to explain the inexplicable scene where someone walks into his office, and he's sitting at his desk wearing a werewolf mask over his head for no reason.

In order for a movie like this to work, we need to care about these characters, and we simply don't.  The human elements that the movie tries to add in, such as Michael's relationship with his young son, or Chris having a concerned wife back at home just aren't fleshed out enough to make these people interesting, and instead come across as a halfhearted attempt to add character.  Except for Chris, these are all terrible people in one way or another, but that's not enough to make them interesting.  They need engaging personalities.  When things start to go wrong for these people, and the various double crosses and plot twists start to reveal themselves, I found that I just didn't care, because the movie had given me nothing to feel about these people.  The characters involved with the plot are thinly written and contain little personality, so when the bullets and bodies start to fly along with some rather graphic violence, there's no connection with the audience.  We can admire how some of the action is being filmed, but there's nothing to it.

Instead of being interesting, Triple 9 simply chooses to be grisly and dark, both in its tone and in the way it's been shot.  This movie is made up of a lot of shadows, and sometimes the actors almost seem to disappear within them.  Why pay extra for such big name talent if you're not even going to let us see them?  We get shadowy bars and restaurants, abandoned buildings, dark alleyways, and grungy streets, but it doesn't do much to add to the atmosphere.  It just makes us wish that certain scenes were lit better.  The only thing that does end up holding our attention are a few good scenes and a couple strong performances, but they never allow the movie to become a successful whole.  They're just scattered pieces of enjoyment in the middle of a very long and dreary drama.

Movies about heists and crooked cops can be absolutely thrilling and a lot of fun, but this one has a curious lack of energy.  It's the kind of stuff we typically get early in the year, and likely will be forgotten by most viewers by March.  This movie gathered a great cast, but didn't find the time to assemble a movie worthy of their talent.  Too bad.

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